Friday, June 17, 2016

Dashed Off XIII

Donne's "The Apparition" and the quasi-horror of certain aspects of sexual life (of course, these aspects are widely drawn upon in actual horror, as well)

appropriateness, obligation, inner strength, balance

"The criterion of a successful theory is that it enables us to understand its predecessors in a newly intelligible way." MacIntyre

The correction of another requires completion in the correction of oneself.

Sartre's 'existence precedes essence' is a misleading way of saying 'will precedes second nature'.

Every pleasure presupposes some end other than itself.
Seeking pleasure for the sake of pleasure is not the same as seeking pleasant things because they are pleasant. Pleasure being a sign of good, pleasant things may be sought because they are prima facie goods; but to seek pleasure for its own sake is to treat a sign of good as itself the good to be sought.

Delight functions like confirmation.

From love of common good comes law that can be good.

Components of Infallible Teaching
- efficient
(1) Christ, who is God, as primary cause
(2a) bishop of Rome precisely as successor of Peter, as secondary cause
(2b) or bishops together acting as successors of apostles, as secondary cause
(2c) or Church as whole as being from the apostles, as secondary cause
- formal cause
(3) definition arising from bishops
- material cause
(4) living faith of Church as a whole
final cause
(5) to guard and expound the apostolic faith

Even when, among those affected by our actions, there are like interests, those interests may be more remote or proximate to us with respect to those who have them -- e.g., in the difference between family and strangers.

Self-interest is not a replacement for either duty or virtue

Almost all popular error consists in a failure to think thing through in order to the end. That is, they arise from patchwork approaches and incompleteness.

serenity of conscience as an integral part of hope

(1) needs of life that are higher than pleasure: to live, to be a part of the human race, to sustain the human race, to reason and seek truth, to love God
(2) the beauty of moderation
(3) avoidng that which poorly expresses human dignity

taste:temperance::law:justice

paradox of testing: To test something properly and adequately requires knowing already what one tests.

conceptual analysis as an ineliminable part of testing

Saints are venerated so that
(1) we might be spurred on by their example
(2) we might have their protection
(3) we might be crowned by their victories
-- all of which express aspects of the love uniting us to them in God

philosophical pedagogy as resource management, logistics

the importance in ethics of the conception of misusing one's own body

Experiment presupposes a form of classification.

bureaucratic government as supercorporation

the matter of chrismation as imposition of hands in sign of the Holy Spirit -- the Apostles were granted special signs, but their successors use the general prophetic sign of the holy oil for anointing

Arguments begin 'outside' us, so to speak, and are only then brought inside, moving from being entertained to being accepted.

language as telepathy
the science fiction trope of telepathy as an exploration of language

deceptiveness as a privation (cp Descartes)

Prudence is a kind of purification.

Truth is the primary principle of freedom.

(1) We have the idea of substance.
(2) The idea of substance cannot originate from sensation alone
the idea of substance as a significant part of our reasoning about existence

What makes modalism about the Trinity wrong is the lack of subsistence.

The idea of being in general is implicit in the intellectual itself. (final cause)

universality of the ideas the possibility of the thing (Rosmini)

Withing a stable society, power arises from stable procedural privileges.

natural law : analytics :: casuistics : topics
then it would seem that the theory of temptation would be to sophistics and something hortatory to poetics & rhetoric

"If there be no moral Truth, there is no Truth." Whewell

temperance as the fence-building virtue

Some kinds of advice can only be given by someone in the right circumstances.

The tradition of human life itself is a grave responsibility.

New Natural Law basic goods and necessitas humanae vitae

temperance and the symbolism of deeds that go beyond mere gestures

nonmeasuring experiments
need for units of measurement for precision
development of means of measurement
measuring experiments
need for unifying formulae
development of unifying formulae
integration of formulae into theories

The distinction between what we need and what we want can only be made by reference to what we are.

measurement as always within a universe of discourse

Affinity structures search; difficulty structures search. (Can these two be taken as comprehensive?)

Through the lens of the sacraments we see that everything is a sign of heaven.

the art of failing well

metaphors as microarguments
naming as microarguments

Vital identity, i.e., identity of a living thing through time, indicates that the form of the living thing is substantial, not accidental.

Because reason is capable of taking all things as instruments, it can be difficult to determine at times whether the reason exhibited is in the principal or instrumental agent, if the behavior of the instrument is sufficiently sophisticated. This is a flaw in the Turing Test -- it fails to distinguish evidence of the computer being intelligent from evidence of the designer being intelligent and having foresight with respect to the instrument.

Descartes' position on final causes directly implies that the only evil is moral evil; natural evil requires natural ends.

To take profit alone as the measure of success in a corporation is like taking calories alone as a measure of health in an organism.

parrhesia as required for tradition

Diversity of experiences is useless without coherent integration.

vestment as part of rhetoric, governed by similar principles (decorum, etc.)

Causal 'mechanisms' are just classifiable causal (inter)actions.

predestination as structure of merit

Grace works the penitential in us.

the base, the ignoble, the disgraceful, the shameful, the beastly, the foul, the turpid, the vile, the brutish

real numbers as representing tendencies of certain sequences

urgency, impact, and trend in analyzing philosophical problems (relative to an argument or position: closeness to argument [directness of implciation], effect on argument, parity [effect on other arguments])

Many atheistic arguments from evil boil down to indirect claims that it is immoral for the human species to exist; this is especially true of popular versions.

Shepherd & manipulability accounts of causation

production processes as messy computations

wholesomeness of family as a need of human life

All scientific progress exhibits the fact that human beings are rational animals.

(1) What can be is, when it is made to be. This is change.
(2) What is changed is changed by what makes it be.
(3) If a thing is made to be, it is not itself the thing that makes it to be.
(4) If a thing is made to be, what makes it to be, must be.
(5) To make a thing be may be a change in what makes it to be.
(6) If there is a chain of things made to be by things that are made to be things that make things be, there is a first in that chain.

Error magna pars miseriae est.

the structure of inquiry and Malebranche on inclination

The four causes are required to have a full account of measurement.

The seal of confession pertains to the sacrament of confession itself, so that (for instance) anyone who accidentally overhears a confession is morally and legally bound by it.

simplicity of means and richness of effects in prudence judgment and decision

most reality in the least compass as a mark of great literature

Art/craft/skill is that which is concerned with coming-to-be insofar as it is within one's power.

the testing of philosophical arguments by examining their analogues in other fields

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For a rough introduction to my philosophy of blogging, including the Code of Amiability I try to follow on this weblog, please read my fifth anniversary post. I consider blogging to be a very informal type of publishing - like putting up thoughts on your door with a note asking for comments. Nothing in this weblog is done rigorously: it's a forum to let my mind be unruly, a place for jottings and first impressions. Because I consider posts here to be 'literary seedings' rather than finished products, nothing here should be taken as if it were anything more than an attempt to rough out some basic thoughts on various issues. Learning to look at any topic philosophically requires, I think, jumping right in, even knowing that you might be making a fool of yourelf; so that's what I do. My primary interest in most topics is the flow and structure of reasoning they involve rather than their actual conclusions, so most of my posts are about that. If, however, you find me making a clear factual error, let me know; blogging is a great way to get rid of misconceptions.